General Tips
For Burying your Electronics, Guns, Documents and More!
Because no one can take what they cannot find
First time burying something
underground? Feeling paranoid? Don’t worry, burying valuables
underground used to be considered crazy or extreme; but since the Y2K
and Mayan apocalypses, survival prepping has gone mainstream. If you’ve
never considered this option before you will quickly find that there are
dozens of survivalist websites, forums and blogs to get you started.
Best tools for digging? …in my humble opinion, are shown in the photo
below. A small hatchet, a small flat pick, a mattock and a shovel should
be all you need. Although I have never needed them, in some situations
you may also find post-hole diggers to be useful.
A
common term used to define an underground stash is “cache” and here are
10 tips, just some suggestions to consider in order to give your
valuables maximum security.
1 – I would feel remiss if I didn’t
state the obvious. Do not tell anyone where your cache is, no one,
period. Not your spouse, best friend or child. That one person who you
really really trust will tell someone else that they really really trust
and so on. Ensure that no one follows you to your caching location and
do not repeatedly travel back and forth. Do not draw any maps or
directions; the only directions should be the ones locked away in your
own memory. If you can help it, don’t even tell anyone that you have a
cache at all. Be creative and build multiple caches as backup or you
could even ‘mark’ a false location as a dummy cache.
2 – If you are concerned about hackers
or electronic surveillance then don’t use your Garmin to locate your
hiding spot. When digging or checking on your underground cache, do NOT
take your cellphone with you. Leave all of your electronic devices at
home, including your digital camera. You do not want any electronic
record of you ever having been at this location. Also remember that your
vehicle’s Tom-Tom, OnStar or LoJack can also be your undoing.
3 – Remember “High and Dry” and stay
away from lakes, rivers, valleys and any flat area of ground. The water
table of any flat area, regardless of elevation, can hold large amounts
of water for an extended time. You want to dig on hilltops, hillsides
and ridges; far away and above any body of water.
4 – When choosing a location, try to
find a place as close to home as possible but far enough away that it
cannot be found by simply sweeping your backyard with a metal detector.
If you live in a rural or suburban area, then this should be easy
enough. If you live in a strictly urban setting, then you may be forced
to choose a location that requires driving some distance. In an ideal
situation, you want your cache located on or near a hilltop, in a wooded
area within walking distance of your home that is unlikely to be
disturbed by construction or logging companies.
5 – You’ll have to research your
location’s “frost line” (those who live in Calgary will have to dig
deeper than those who live in Juarez) and try to place the top of your
container at or below that depth. I’ve buried above the frost line
before and never had problems; but if you’re not checking your cache at
least once a year, then you will want to get below the frost line.
Burying above the frost line means extreme changes in temperature that
will cause something called ‘frost heave.’ This can not only actually
move your items around, but can cause condensation inside your
containers. Frost heave can also crush your containers.
6 – Do NOT ‘mark’ your spot. Do not
pound a stake in the ground, put a big rock nearby or tie a rag around a
tree. Markers like these can not only be found by others, but they can
be moved. Depending solely on a marker to find your underground cache
could lead to disaster. You just need to ‘know’ where it is. Pick a
certain tree, curve in the ridge line or an outcropping of rock and
remember it. Also, you will want your underground cache to be located
somewhere that no one who knows you would ever associate with you. Do
not bury valuables near your favorite camping spot, your favorite
fishing spot or near your deer hunting tree stand. Keep in mind from the
very beginning that if your cache was to be discovered, you’d want
everyone who knows you to think, “Really, he hid his stuff there?”
7 – I’ve traveled considerably and
every small town that I’ve ever lived in had rumors about a nearby creek
where the water flowed uphill. While constructing, arranging, placing
and covering your cache, actually picture the water running uphill and
remember that this is a scientific impossibility. Water flows downhill
and this is the basis for what I call my “Bell Method.” The Bell Method
is based on the fact that you can take an empty drinking glass, turn it
upside down (like a hanging bell) and push it down into a bucket of
water. Anything attached to the bottom of the glass would remain
perfectly dry. I started using this concept during my teenage years and
no matter how deep underwater (within reason) there will always be a
pocket of air inside. In the following webpages, I’ll go into more
detail about the Bell Method and include some photographs.
8 – Insulate whatever you are burying
against rapid changes in temperature. It’s useless to waterproof
something only to have moisture condensate inside your sealed container.
Take an empty 20 ounce Coca-Cola bottle, rinse and dry it out
completely. Screw the lid on tight and alternate placing the empty
bottle in the freezer, then outside on a hot summer day and back in the
freezer again. Sooner or later, if you continue to do this, moisture
will start appearing on the inside of the bottle. This is the exact same
thing that can easily happen to all of your ammunition, each circuit
board, each paper document and each firearm you bury underground.
Burying below your area’s frost line and using temperature insulation is
critical.
9 – Steel wool will rust very easily.
Buy some fine grade (0000) and place a piece of it with whatever you are
burying. Say for instance, that you dig up your cache once a year and
check everything out. Every year you should place that exact same piece
of steel wool back into your container(s), if the year ever comes when
it suddenly has rust on it; then you know that you have a problem.
10 – Lastly, I want to reemphasize my
first tip. Do not tell anyone anything about the location of your
underground cache. Burying your valuables keeps them absolutely safe
because of the single solitary fact that no one knows where they are. If
your geocaching is the result of a group project, then make damn sure
you can trust your fellow preppers with both your property and quite
possibly your life; furthermore, whether you are digging in an urban,
suburban or rural environment remember that there are probably more
people watching you than you realize. Use common sense when traveling to
and from your location, wear camouflage or dark clothing and try be
quiet when digging. Be sneaky, dig at 4:00am during a full moon without
using a flashlight or be creative; only visit your cache during a severe
thunderstorm.
Tricks and Tips for Caching
Because no one can take what they cannot find
I’ve put together this webpage to
share a few little tricks that I’ve learned over the years. It’s a
little haphazard and disorganized but I’m hopeful that this page might
save you some time, money or frustration.
Don’t underestimate good old-fashioned
Zip-Loc brand (not generic or any other brand but ZIP-LOC brand
double-zipper) baggies in either quart or gallon size. These things are
great; cheap and totally watertight.
Just
burying a single flashdrive or a few pieces of jewelry? Use the
simplest version of my Bell Method. Take a Vitamin Water bottle like
this one that I found in the corner of my garage.
Drop
your flashdrive into a Zip-Loc baggie, seal it and then drop that
baggie into another one. Leave just enough air so that the flashdrive
would float and slip it into the bottle.
Screw
the cap on firmly, bury the bottle upside down and boom! Just like
that, you’ll have a cache that will last remain secure for many years. A
bottle this size should be good-to-go for a depth of no more than 24
inches, any deeper and the weight of the dirt could crush it. Be sure to
bury it upside down so if the cap does leak, water still won’t get in.
Need to shield it from EMP?…just wrap it in aluminum foil or copper
mesh; FYI the copper mesh is best since it’s the better conductor. Total
cost is probably less than 5 bucks, it requires no tools and it will
protect your flashdrive for many years.
You
can see by the last photo, that the flashdrive itself is lodged near
the bottom of the bottle. This is ideal since the Vitamin Water bottler
will be upside-down, placing the usb drive near the top of the bell.
SanDisk makes a model called the “Extreme” and it has solid reviews for both reliability and durability.
When using plastic drinking bottles to
cache your valuables underground, do NOT use clouded plastic containers
like milk jugs. Liquids like milk and motor oil are usually bottled in
HDPE marked as #2 on the SPI recycling label. This label is located on
the bottom of every plastic container; it has 3 arrows in the shape of a
triangle and usually says, “Please recycle.” Drinking containers and
small bottles made from HDPE plastics will crack, split and break apart
very quickly (within a year). Stick with clear plastics; PET/PETE or #1
on the SPI recycling label…
…and
remember that this rule applies only to drinking containers like milk
jugs. I believe most 5-gallon buckets are HDPE or #2 on the SPI
recycling label and I’ve used plenty of them over the years; when using
Tupperware or Rubbermaid type products, look for a #5 on the SPI label.
If you are looking to safeguard
important photographs or documents, just bury them in your yard for
convenience. Remove any staples or paper clips and use only plastics to
cache them. Without any metals present, they would be virtually
invisible to most technology. You could actually tell your neighbors
that you had valuable documents buried in your garden or flower bed; and
anything short of ground penetrating radar would be useless in locating
them.
I rummaged through my garage today and
found several items worth mentioning. I found an old cooler with a lid
and it’s just perfect for depths of up to about 3 or 4 feet.
Bury
it upside-down and make sure you bury it with the lid. Without the lid,
the weight of overhead soil will slowly push it deeper, displacing
precious air. Place your valuables in waterproof containers on the lid
of the cooler. If the cooler does not remain level, it won’t matter at
all because any water entering along the bottom will just make these two
Outdoor Products dry boxes float.
I
also found an old garden spray bottle with a broken nozzle. Instead of
throwing it away, one could roll up documents, jewelry or flashdrives in
Zip-Loc’s and bury it upside-down using my Bell Method.
Set
it on a piece of wood to prevent dirt from being pushed up inside.
Garden sprayers like these are long lasting and very tough. I’m just
guessing, but it could probably withstand depths deeper than most of us
care to dig. Just as I did with the cooler, I used a ratchet strap to
secure the package as one piece. You can count on a quality ratchet
strap lasting about three years underground.
Always
remember that just as in everything else in life, creativity counts;
some preppers get creative and use tire nozzles to purge their PVC pipe
caches with nitrogen and leave 3-5lbs PSI of pressure inside the tube.
Without oxygen, nothing can rust or oxidize; and with constant internal
pressure, you are guaranteed not to have any water leaking in.
This may sound paranoid, but watch
your air cover. There are more eyes in the sky than we realize and all
of the precautions in the world won’t matter a bit if there is a photo
of you on Google Maps digging a hole in a field 
My Personal Cache – A Step-by-Step Guide
How to Bury Your Stuff: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide
Because no one can take what they cannot find
Take an empty 20 ounce Coca-Cola
bottle, rinse and dry it out completely. Screw the lid on tight and
alternate placing the empty bottle in the freezer, then outside on a hot
summer day and back in the freezer again. Sooner or later, if you
continue to do this, moisture will start appearing on the inside of the
bottle. This is the exact same thing that can easily happen to all of
your electronic circuit boards. To guard against this, I will be going
through a step-by-step process and showing you exactly how I am caching
my own external hard drive.
For this demonstration, I’m going to
be copying my laptop’s files onto an external hard drive. I will then
cache this hard drive at another location, but first I will be
photographing the steps I am taking in order to show you the proper way
to shield your electronics and digital devices from both condensation
and electro-magnetic pulse.
In this photo, you can see my silver Seagate 1tb Backup Plus HDD.
This
Seagate HDD model has moving parts that may not withstand long-term
exposure to moisture and extreme temperatures; so while burying this
particular hard-drive, it will be critical that I dig below the
frost-line. When burying digital storage devices, it’s preferable to use
an SSD (solid-state drive) whenever possible; they are expensive but
also incredibly tough and able to handle many times the abuse.
I have already saved my laptop’s
important files (music, photos, vacation videos and a couple of my
favorite films) to the HDD and then placed it inside a FoodSaver vacuum
bag with two bags of desiccant.
I
then wrapped the FoodSaver bag with a cotton t-shirt for temperature
insulation and placed the wrapped HDD inside an Outdoor Products brand
dry box. These little things are great for water-sports, however after
about 3 years the seals will start to dry-rot. So if you’re caching for
several years, use all-purpose silicone around the seal. If you prefer,
substitute a small Tupperware container in place of the dry box. You
will still need to use all-purpose silicone to seal the lid and I would
wrap it with half a roll of tightly-bound electrical tape for insurance.
I now have a Seagate 1tb Backup Plus
inside a sealed container made completely out of plastic and silicone,
both of which are good electrical insulators. I want to shield my
hard-drive from electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) so I’m going to construct
what is called a Faraday Cage. I won’t go into details about how the
Faraday works, there is plenty of data available elsewhere online. As
you can see below, I’ve wrapped this plastic container with copper mesh,
successfully shielding my HDD from electrical disturbances.
At the last minute, I have decided to
add several more items, including another Outdoor Products dry box to
this cache. The second dry box contains an extra pair of reading
glasses, a pocketknife and a few other personal items. I will be using
sections of foam swimming pool “noodles” to keep the boxes evenly spaced
while inside the tube. This practice maintains a good temperature
buffer and also prevents damage during transport by holding everything
inside the tube in place.
As you can see in the photo below, the
two boxes and the styrofoam noodle “spacers” will only take up about
two-thirds the length of the pipe. The remaining space will be used for a
few more personal items; I’ll leave it to your imagination what they
might be.
I
have taken both of my Outdoor Product dry boxes and placed them inside a
section of 6-inch PVC sewer pipe. I’ve used epoxy resin to seal one end
and petroleum jelly to seal the other; using a permanent marker to
designate which end of the pipe can be opened and which cannot.
The
“dead air” space inside the pipe acts as a second layer of insulation
against rapidly changing temperatures and the pipe itself acts as a
second water-proofing device. Since the pipe and endcaps are also
electrical insulators, when I bury the pipe I will wrap it completely in
heavy-duty aluminum foil to act as a second Faraday Box.
Remember to cut slits in the aluminum
foil along the bottom of the pipe for drainage; the last thing you want
is water pooling around your cache. I’m also using the aluminum foil to
attach a flat screwdriver to one end of the pipe.
Well,
there you have it. I’ve done this more times than I could begin to
count and I know that as sure as I sit here, that many years from now,
this HDD can be safety retrieved in pristine condition. I plan to launch
this website about a week or so after burying this cache near a cabin
in the Daniel Boone National Forest. I’ll bury the pipe over the Labor
Day holiday weekend on a ridgeline about 24 inches below the surface,
exactly as it is shown in the above photo.
With double redundancies insuring
against water damage, electrical surge and condensation, I can rest
easy; knowing that all of my digital data is securely protected against
anything and everything.
A
common term used to define an underground stash is “cache” and here are
10 tips, just some suggestions to consider in order to give your
valuables maximum security.
